I've contact them by e-mail... (Note, he knows I'm from belgium.. and this isn't the only purpose of the text to be posted over here...)

BEGIN OF TEXT

Thanks for writing us about our program, its nice we can talk halfway around
the world like this. I will try to answer your question as directly and as
honestly as possible.

For what official reason has your team got kicked out of the xprize ?We are publicly stating racism, It looks, and feels, like the X-prize
people are not looking for diversity among the competitors. That's common
in America. I am sure you already know this by our history on civil rights,
but that's ok we are praying for them, and still moving forward. I believe
we have a superior design, and a safer flight profile, so sooner or later we
will succeed at setting the standers, and this will be for the entire worlds
benefit, not just a few select races living on earth. They stated recently
that we were back yard mechanics and did shoddy work, but then never came
to see our actually workmanship. They wanted entrepreneur involvement but
would never put our teams pictures on their web page like everyone else was
allowed to do.

What's your reaction for the people who're laughing when they see your pictures... people who don't understand why you're using wood and materials not normally used in the aerospace industry ?I love being laughed at, It confirms that I am doing something different
and beyond the norm. That's how I remain unique and a trend setter in my
field. This is just our first prototype. It serves as an engine test bed,
and a fight simulator at the same time. We will also fly it as a means of
testing out the RCU and flight control sub-systems at low and medium
altitudes before we build the two metal version. We also wanted something
that we could allow the public to freely gain access to during the
construction of its design.

When do you expect to go for the first time above 100Km (62.5 miles) sub space) altitude ?We hope to do it on the next Wright Brothers anniversary coming up this
December 14th too the 17th, and just as the X-prize five year window
expires. We wanted to give all go the competitors a full and or fair chances
at winning the race first. After our wooden prototype Saucer complete the
low altitude test flight phase we will construct two metal derivative type
vehicles and send the original one one a world wide media turn, and later
into a museum. One of the metal versions of the prototype will serve as
the foundation of our flying car production line, and the other model will
become the space penetration flight vehicle. Later the space vehicle will go
on to form the backbone of my airlines transition to space operations. We
will also have unmanned version doing a verity of jobs as well.

Here is a e-mail letter explaining more on our conflict this X-prize,
please see attachment. Its a little wordy but feel free to print what you
want , and or cross validate at will. it all true. The latest development
is that X-prize is not returning our confidential registration package,
and we now believe its contents have been compromised. I anticipated that
this could happen, before ever actually attempting to joined there race,
and their for did not fully disclose the secrets of the ship primary
operation features, but still we do not appreciate their lake of honesty.
Please send me a publish article if you can. Thanks for your interest, stay
in touch, and God Bless.

In the Christian spirit of fairness and love of our fellow man I have warned you many times over the past twelve months that your constant display of incompetence, and racial biasness was inflecting injury on both me and my family team members of Blue Ridge Nebula airlines. In June of last year your foundation elected to take our entry funds and too except our application but decide to not allow us in the X-prize competition because you alone decided that our web page was not sufficient, stating that it included our desire to conduct future flights to space based locations like planets and moons just as your web page depicts. Even though there is not provisions in the rules of the x-prize competition that stipulates, or controls the appearance, and content of the individual team members web page, and or our separate/ independent business practices activities, you still elected to invent a condition that was used to delay our entry into the race for over six months with out even tell us what it was. No other team has been delayed for this long period of time from being able to entry the race even though they had met all of the documented, and or application and committee approval stipulations like we had done. In fact it was not until I personal forced you to divulge the reason why we were being delayed from entering the competition, that we finally discovered the newly created stipulations you were temporality setting forth and only toward us,. Ones this was reveal my team promptly offered to change the web pages content to you meet you bias “make it up as you go along” standers, at a great negative cost impact to use. In fact even the other 5 artificial reasons for limiting our ability to enjoy the same freedom, as the rest of the competitors were allow to partake of, over these last 12 months also have no legal “documented” basses per the X-prize Master Agreement stipulations (sent to use, or either posted on your web page) that your foundation has entered into with use. You stated that you all have been monitoring our web page changes and our press release phraseology but because you won’t respond to our purposed changes on ether issue we have not been able to make any changes or conducted any releases since we joined the races last year. You seem to just make things up designed to delay , derailed or to even serve as a mechanism design to kick us out of the race, as you go along, rather then follow the documented regulations, and rules of the competition that we all agreed to through signature, or to even try to communicate effectively with us. Your foundations bias and prejudicial behaver patters extended toward us over a period of a years worth of time now has served to also become an embarrassment to both the Aerospace industry and my personal association with your organization, so we are electing to remain unfairly, and unjustifiably bared from the X-prize competitions by you until new, competent, and unbiased leadership is selected, receive a letter of apology and receive finical compensation for our injuries, lost time, distractions and efforts. We are also demanding that if we are bared form the competition then we wish that Scaled Composites also be kicked out of the race for their miss guided ten year progress goals, and or unrelated aircraft construction activities. In the mean time we will continual to tell our story filled with its trials and tribulations encountered in our pursuit to fly into space, to the world, which now includes you negative, and unwarranted raciest behavior patterns.

Even though your committee had checked all of our aerospace science space flight references and confirmed, over and over, the validly of our space ships flight capability, our teams sincerity, and was even in passion of real time video footage of the Flying Saucers actual flying capability, display in the ( Colorado’s prominent TV news studio conducted here in Denver) you alone decide to over rule the committees decision to accept my team, and instead elected to hold, communicate, and display a negative biased belief system toward us for over a year, solely because we were black people that you believed were possessing a lack of sincerity of our ability to operate either a flight team or space flight company. To this date no other team has displayed the ability to provide you, or the public, utilizing actual video footage, definitive proof of their purposed space crafts ability to fly in or out of the atmosphere in accordance’s with their purposed flight profiles. This lake of evidence, by the rest of the field, of actual prototype flight capabilities makes our video of real time Flying Saucer flight capabilities even more significant to our ability to display maximum sincerity, and or superior space craft development ability to compete successfully in your competition. In addition to this proof of our sincerity to build a Space Ship that has the ability to fly to space, I also informed you that the Flying Saucer concept was also accepted, and used successfully to meet the aeronautical scientific requirements of my Ph D degree program dissertational research data way back in 1983, which also further justified our validity and sincerity to compete successfully in the X-prize competition.

Even though I was able to provide sufficient and verifiable data on the only all America minority owned (Blue Ridge’s) racing teams ability to compete in the race, which even to this date far exceeds all of the visual information submitted by most of the other competitors in your race, you alone continual to both posses, and display a racial bias toward my family. Through out the entire forth quart of last year I had to fight repeatedly with you to even send the previously singed copy of our Master Agreement contract to use. In fact even after the document was in route to our office, via Elaine’s personal actions, you continual to insist that we were not a legitimate contender for the race, constantly stating that our intentions, and desire to fly to other planets eventually, was impossible for use to do, and a blight on you foundation. While the whole time you foundation was display spaceship, landing and departing factitious red atmospheric planets that will never have the capability of performing such feats in their depicted configurations, on your web page. You literally forced use to remove our depictions of very possible space flight events, we will conduct soon, while your firm increased its depiction of totally impossible futuristic space flight activities, and while ridiculing us and promoting your selves, like fools of the industry, to the entire world. While we were trying to respect you right to dream of advanced space flight occurrences, you were busy disrespecting our right to promote our real space flight capabilities, and even moved to penalize us for you short comings.

Then to further deepen your harassing, and negative behaver toward our family team you alone decided not to put our teams information, and or, our pictures displaying black men in aerospace science as leaders of the industry, in photographs format on the web page, that should have gone on line along with the other two new members of the competition, for the rest of the year for no apparent reason other then you apparently lost our confidential reservation application files and sensitive vehicle description information. In fact it was only after repeated, and persistent personal calls undertaking by myself that finally forced your firm to attempt to treat us with the same respect that the other two, new December entry, flight teams were being provide for over two months ahead of us , even though we had applied, and was excepted a half a year before either team registered.

To this date no other team has be delayed from entering you race for this long , who had earlier met all of your committees reviewed, and approved, documented requirements. As we insisted that you let use in since we had qualify for this luxury months earlier you repeatedly stated that because of the delays we now had no chance to win the race, and that at lest two other teams would likely to be the winners with in a few months into the new year. I constantly rebuttal your negative prognostics conjectures and consistently replied that you let the other two new entrees in to the race at this late date with no grief and that only God knows who will win ultimately, reminding you that many of the assumed leaders in the original Lindbergh race to Frances were kill early on, and that you should not be negative bias toward our team and positive toward our competition since you were appointed as administrator of the teams and competition.

Once it was agree to put my team on the web site finally, you refused to display our contents in the same format as the rest of the competitive field, while also electing to leave off our names, and black faces, even though you were in possession of this informant, and photographs for over 6 months. Ones again after receiving repeated complaints, issued by myself, and other members of the flight team, that you finally placed only my name on our little area of the web pages team profile section, but opted to not display our teams black features via photographs their in order to hide our true racial identities. Finally pictures of me, and the ship, were displayed on the front page of your foundations site, but for two days only. Our ships picture was remove promptly, while two or three other teams’ photographs remained on the fount page for over three months. We were pushed further, and further to the back of the bus until we finally fell out the back end. With out our permission you decide to replace the actual live picture of our Flying Saucer, and my self in side, which clearly displays our sincerity and superiority over the rest of the field, with a fictional picture of you version of our saucer with no black people involved and flying in the atmosphere and not in space. Even after server complaining phone calls from me to remove the inaccurate photograph, and to display our real life crafts appearances in action, like the rest of the competitors in the race including Scaled Composite’s, Great Whit Night concept, were being allowed to enjoy, you refused to comply, preferring to signal us out, and view our blackness as a negative aspect of your group. You’re repeatedly stated that our presences and behavior was a negative mark on the competition’s reputation, and integrity, even though we were displaying superior capabilities, backgrounds, and rate of spaceship development progress, to the industry and general public, at a higher rate then as compare too many of the entry like Discraft. While it has taking over 4 years to develop all of the other competitors, lower generation, rocket launchers, we have advanced our Flying Saucer's concept to a fully manned size configuration within four short months.

To further comply with the standards of X-prize protocol for the web site information, I sent you and Mr. Treinis over 15 picture of the Flying Saucers developmental progress too be displayed in the scrolling section of the web page and general photo galley , as requested by the foundation, But ones again, and in true racial negative prejudicial behaver patterns, the black team ( Blue ridge Nebula Airlines) was again the only team bared for being include in this section of you web page as well. Mr. Treinis refusal to display our photos of the ship on the site, that were design to prove our sincerity , and or provide further definitive proof of its true existences, and superior capability. Instead you all engaged in using the excuse that the foundation has decide to only utilize head shots on the web page as a new reason to reject our images opportunity to be displayed along side the rest of the competitors action pictures. I ask Mr. Treinis to please put our family head shot picture on the web page, (that you were in possession of for over 9 months at that time), but he refuse to comply, and also indicated that all of our confidential data , tapes, CD's and diskettes had either been compromised, violated or lost. Even to this date all of the other teams are being allowed to display both full body shots, and or, flight team member head shots documenting their activities on both you web page and their own individual sites. But we were ones again bared and biased from being able to enjoy the same luxuries of the race as the rest of the field even through we are quickly becoming one of the most famous teams in the race.

In an effort to get may of these distraction, racially discriminatory, negatively impacting, behavior patterns and or issues, undertaking by the X-prize staff members, resolved, I have been made to conduct several, time consuming, phone calls and been forced to take time away from my management duties to compose countless e mails and or official letters addressed to the Missouri office , (Mr. Davidian, Mr. Maryniak, Mr. Treinis and now Dr. Peter Diamandis) at a great time, and negative financial impacting expenses to our team, and my self. But most of these individuals actually refused to respond to my correspondence designed to resolve these problems, each of these men simply refused to return my calls, and or e mail us for weeks at a time. You gentlemen have displayed little sincerity for the desire to treat use fairly, or even as human beans, because of the color of our skin... We have repeatedly displayed our capability to compete successfully in the competition, but your bias and negative attitudes have blinded you all from the truth, and have instead encouraged you to act in a prejudices manner on repetitive bases which has been distributed over 11 months now. This long duration of harassment, rejection and attacks on our wellbeing has forced use to experiences extreme emotional trauma, and to suffer massive embarrassing moments in the general public arena. This damage in irreversible and unjustified since we are actually one of the most advancing team in the race.

When Camp Car agreed to help in a portion of the sponsorship of the race all of the competing flight teams were notified of this event in a timely fashion except the only black team in the race (Blue Ridge Nebula Airline) because you have refused to include us on your flight team common mailing list. Opting to once again leave us on the outside looking in and continual to display poor communication abilities toward our team. In fact Mr. Treinis had to transmit a special e mail to use a week or two later finally informing us of the good news, as a futile means of trying to keep use informed to some small degree. Over the past twelve months your foundation seems to enjoy the fact that you do things, and make decisions that affect our welfare deeply, but refuse to inform us of these important and or crucial impacting activities.

Your most recent attempt to ( illegally) remove us from the competition ( with out formally notifying us) because of you apparent and blatant dislike for our skin color, and or heritage, has led you to make additional, unprofessional, and irrational decisions that served to only inflect and harm us. Your letter stated that the justification for this dismissal was based on our recent behaver patterns over the past few months in relation to our web page changes, and or press releases content statements. You personally sited the fact that you have a problem with the fact that we have elected to develop other Flying Saucer shaped vehicles that have the ability to serve as both automobiles and or deep space craft, as a indication that we are lacking sincerity, and or any ability to win the space race, or any of your other planed future space flight races. You further clamed that my desire to produce a family line of Flying Saucers through the use of a separate corporation endeavors, unlike Scale Composite which is displaying a desire to use the same company, has the potential of prorogating mix messages among, and or through out the body of potential investors, supporters , and or future sponsors of your foundation or other members of the racing field . But in reality the rest of the competitors are allow to both freely develop and or advertise there diversity in craft design, spanning from automobile creations to exotic atmospheric limited flying vehicles that don’t have the ability to fly into space. These all white people owned racing teams are also allowed to opportunity or to express their desires and interest to advanced the filed of aerospace sciences through deep space flight activities and or imagines of orbital flight activities. In fact just a bought every other potential space flight entrepreneur, or organization in this competition, and or the world, has expressed the same desires as we have, to push the envelope of the new space frontier for the benefit of mankind. Even the X-Prize Foundation basic mission statement, goals and creeds indicates this as well as mention that ones the low earth orbital flight complexities are resolved access to deep space flight activities will be vastly improved. The only team that is not allow to express this desire to expand the envelop of space flight activities in your race is the black team (Blue Ridge Nebula Airlines). As time went on we were originally delayed entry access, and finally kicked us out of the race for attempting to engage in the same performance of these aspirations and dreams as the rest of you, all white people, and in the standard manner as the rest of the all white space flight competitors were allowed to do.

Future more if you ,or your coworkers would have bothered to take us up on our invitation to come and share in our world primer display of the first man-made, FAA registered, successful, Flying Saucer, placed on display in down town Denver last month, on the 20th, and just before you deemed us not serious , or too even discuss any reservation and or potential conflicts of interest with my families activities, before you jumped to negative conclusions, for the fifth time, and in a very unprofessional manner, your foundation would have discovered that not only do we have a real, four man size, Flying Sauce and are the only team that has actually registered our SSTO VTOL space craft with the FAA, but that we did not even conduct the press conferences you were so worried about . nor did we make any changes to our web page since its original approval by you and your committee last year. Blue Ridge Nebula Airlines could not do these things because you won’t respond to our change request e mailed.

Ones again it seems that because of your negative psychotic biased attitudes, and inability to administer your duties as overseers of the varies team members activity’s, you did not even know that your foundation did not possess any legitimate reason to kick us out of the competition ( per your sited reasons), primarily because you refused to approve, or disapprove our wording request due to poor communication activities. Beside you seem to be getting my airline goals mixed up with our family desire to go sub orbital with the HSGS-711 version of the HSGS vehicle's production family line of Saucers. Just like Scaled Composite aircraft manufacturing activities my other company activities are none of your foundations business and or concern according to the Master Agreement stipulations, so if we are kicked out of the race for having other vehicles in our production line, or a desire to one day, which are not exclusively design to fly sub orbital , but that do serve to advance the fields of air transportation, aviation, and aerospace flight then we demand that you also vote to kick out Scaled Composite and the may other teams that are producing,, or soon to be producing cars and aircraft that don’t , or can’t conduct sub orbital flight missions either, or that can fly deeper into space.

Your foundations desire to hold future competitions that will be directed at pushing the level of space flight capabilities further along the developmental path, and even your web pages depiction of spacecraft taking off from other worlds seem to parallel our desires, and many of our competitors wishes to fly to the stars as well, so how can you site us for doing the very same thing you are openly endorsing through pictorial images, and inspiring messages to presidential staff members and others every day as the world looks on.. Just because we are black people with innovated desires, and advanced capabilities that serve to parallel your dreams and wishes, you seem to believe, and say through your biases actions and behavior patterns that we, as black people can’t do what you, and the other exclusively white dominate space flight racing teams are freely allowed to do, and are even encouraging to do by your foundation on a daily basses. You want to see sincerity and developed capabilities from use through observation behavior activities but then you won’t even come a few miles south to witness first hand our success at proving you wrong about us, time and time again. These demonstration held for both the public and Colorado’s creditable media community are designed to confirm the Flying Saucers capabilities of reaching both sub and orbital space flight regimes as we public display its flight capability attributes. Not only do you refuse to communicant or even work with use on this issue you insist on fabricating reasons to delay our progress, and or to kick us out the race so you don’t have to deal with black leaders of the industry or your short-sidedness and insincerity to make the race a fair, and equable competition that does not serve as anything but a promotional platform for Scaled Composite.

Instead of celebrating our ability to lead the field of aviation, and aerospace science, which my 30 year historic background in the field has centennially established to be the case, you have decided to minimize our historical accomplishments and under recognizes our flexible superiority abilities, and elected to moved in a direction that only serves to insulted our integrate time and time again. Your persistent inability to believe that black people can accomplish great things in this field, just like white people, and or members of other races on this earth, have lead you to develop a negative racial bias behaver pattern toward us, and has inflected both mental, and financial harm on our family teams efforts to compete in your race over these past 12 months. You seem to forget that it was Black People that built the first airship, propeller , helicopter , jet seat and NASA Space Shuttle robotic retrieval arm. Based on aviation and aerospace science historical records its standard procedures for black ingenuity to set the pace for this industry, just as we are now doing in you X-prize competition.

Because you have displayed a repeated inability in your behaver pattern to treat us as equal competitors in the X-prize race, because of our races and or colored, we have been forced into giving up trying to encourages you to behave in a fair and equitable manor toward our black membership racing team, or to have your overseers assure that your maintaining a suitable administered environment aimed at providing a fair competition, and one that is open to the full public, and does not favor just a few members like Scaled Composite. Lindbergh would never take part in any such desecration of the integrity of the aviation and aerospace science fields quest to development. So why should other prominent members of the industry expected to do so.

Until new leadership is put in place to interface with us, by Zero Gravity’s X-prize competition founding leaders, we refuse to take part in this biases un-fair race you are conducting that has served to alienate harasses , embarrass and injures me an my fellow associates of Blue Ridge Nebula Airlines . We demand that if we have been kicked out of the race then all of our personal items, sent to you in an effort to comply with the competition entry procedures, and or to justify our sincerity / capabilities of competing in the race, be returned to us within 20 days of your original letter composed to illegally kicking us out of the competition (03-23-2004. .If any of these items (spanning from our vide tapes, and CD, too our word processors composed diskettes and team photographical images) are not provide to us within this time frame we will began charging you $10.00 per day , per item missing , that clearly substantiates our sincerity and advanced capabilities. We are also charging you over $1,000.00 for the time , embarrassment, slander, and additional problems you have inflected on both my family, associates, and myself over the past year, via your diabolical attempt to promote, and advances you negative bias and incompetent X-prize competition management styles. Please send all registration, application documentation and other related evaluation information that established our sincerity, as well as your violation fees and or / funds to the above address within the same time frame called out above, and in this paragraph.

It is too bad that we are forced to take this position but your actions of prejudices, and biasness’ toward the only American based minority team in the race is inflecting server, and none-reversible financial , physical and emotional harm on our organizations, and its reputation as a serious contender in the aerospace filed of space flight, and for this type of horrific action tacking by your membership the world must be inform of your incompetence , races and negative behavior. You must be made to understand , through the help of the good people of this planet, that this is not industry standard or acceptable behavior, and you foundation is giving commercial tourism space flight industry a negative reputation before we even get started. If you want to fly to the stars in one of our spaceships then you must learn to not act to discredit our industry in this way.

Black People were the first to come to this planet, and the opportunity to migrate to the heavens is , and will continual to be afforded to everyone, not just for your personal selected, and or set aside special white based organizations and or white individuals. Rest assured that we will continual to lead the race for space flight, but will never take part in bias , and or prejudicial efforts to screen out cretin individuals, or groups because of their racial background or ability to accomplish great things is granted by God himself. Not only do we refuse to be part of this abomination, we also refuse to work with any one else who is taking part in this race, and or their sponsors, and will encourage others to boycott this collection of raciest white people who support the minimization of minorities rights to gain access to space in the same way you have allowed white people to do.

Again in the spirit of Christian brotherhood we wish you, and our fellow competitors total success, even though their activities , and reputations will now, and forever be marked by you organizations bias actions in-favor of Scaled Composites and against in-compliances racing teams like Blue Ridge Nebula Airlines, and a few others. Its now apparent to may people in the world, as well as the international media community now that you have rigged this race in favor of only one, or two teams, right from the beginning, and are using the rest of us to finances this sideshow. The American public, and the rest of the world will not stand for such bias actions by your foundation much lounger and will eventually begin to question you and your sponsors prejudice historical behavior patterns.

We now move aside to allow our God to rectify this situation by opting to give this problem fully over to his superior powers of resolution and equable punishment. Your foundation has become an embarrassment to us, the industry, America and the rest of the world, but we are praying for new leadership and restoration of your reputation and the removal of Scaled Composite especially from the race because of a bias charged environment displayed on your web page over the past few years. In the mean time we will tell our story, as you have fashion it through your negative bias and racially prejudices actions toward us , to the world. God Bless you all and we wish you nothing but good luck in the future, as God deems it appropriate. We judge your words in the name of our Lord and Saver Jesus Christ.

I'd just like to congratulate anyone who actually read that whole thing. After the first few paragraphs it seems like it just repeated over and over, anything interesting from the second half of the letter?

These guys give a bad name to Christians. I don't think it's in God's plan to remove the current leadership, although who am I to question the will of God. Although there's always two sides to any story, in the space industry it seems like talk is cheap. If they wanted to be taken seriously, they should have made some serious progress.

My other issue is how incredibly poor the standard of English is. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you can't show a grasp of your own first language?

I'd just like to congratulate anyone who actually read that whole thing. After the first few paragraphs it seems like it just repeated over and over, anything interesting from the second half of the letter?

These guys give a bad name to Christians. I don't think it's in God's plan to remove the current leadership, although who am I to question the will of God. Although there's always two sides to any story, in the space industry it seems like talk is cheap. If they wanted to be taken seriously, they should have made some serious progress.

My other issue is how incredibly poor the standard of English is. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you can't show a grasp of your own first language?

I've readed it...
Well an other intresting part is.. that they are claiming a LOT OF money... for the damage.. and items that are missing..... 10.000 us$ a day/item lol

English isn't my first language.. but indeed.. I even see a lot of mistakes I know that I make mistakes.. but atleast.. I ask an other person to change my texts in english when it's something important... (this post is NOT important lol)

Jesus wept. I suppose that the X-prize bosses could be resurgent Nazis, the Canadians are building a V-2! Honest to God though, what are they hoping to achieve here? People like this actually damage race relations by making pathetic and unsubstantiated claims of discrimination. I applaud Sigurd for exposing these idiots in the proper manner and not merely sniping without checking first. Can we please have no more posts regarding this bunch of hicks.

As much as this forum has mocked the guy (for obvious reasons), he does have some valid points even if racial discrimination is probably not one of them.

1. Many x-prize competitors indulge in only what could be termed as 'flights of fancy' and grand plans.
2. Some of the other competitors still on the Xprize website have little more than drawings (Discraft.) At least BRNA has a crappy looking mockup.
3. X-prize took his money. Why, I'm not sure - how was he was taken seriously in the first place? Maybe he's been led on and should get his cash back....

I think the real reason BRNA got kicked out was the lack of professional looking prototypes or conceptual photos. They probably still would have been on the web page had they prettied up the prototypes a bit more, had a professional looking web-page, and said that the trip to Pluto was scheduled to occur in 20 years.

Bottom line - I think that the X-prize needs to do some more culling. There are still too many non-teams on the web site.

There are other teams that seem pretty shaky. At this point, if the team didn't make it into the front page poll (12 teams building full scale units), it's not a good sign. Xprize has come a long way - a little bit more selectivity would not hurt them at this time

P.S. If I see the BRNA saucer flying anytime soon, I'll be rushing down to Home Depot to buy my own skylight and screen door so I too can join the space age.

I...uh...wow. I actually felt physically sick, for a moment... but that might have been breakfast (bleh). Anyway....wow. I had to register on this forum just to express my utter disbelief. I can't believe they got rid of the leading team! Blue Ridge Nebula Airlines had my vote on the X Prize win! Those judges are all just racist/nazi/anything else associated with evil because they dont like black people and now Blue Ridge has to become the Third wave generation / space thingy (what?) for the future.

p.s: I e-mailed their contact us link to see if they actually respond to me... if they do, I might post the results here... should be interesting...

_________________Only in darkness, the light. Only in silence, the word. Only in dying, life. Bright, the hawk's flight, on the empty sky.

As a member of one of the "credible" teams remaining in the competition, I think this whole issue has been handled wrongly by X-Prize. Though the majority of Dr. Haynes' complaints of racism seem misplaced, I think he does have a point regarding a systematic prejudice against his team (BRNA).

"Credibility of Design" is a criteria in need of much care in enforcement. Judging the work of a team based on website photographs is NOT a sound method. Obviously the X-Prize must have some minimum bar for entry. BRNA jumped that hoop (there are MANY hoops in this competition), and the foundation ought to live with that.

I'll be the first to admit that the BRNA concept lies on shaky and untested ground. As an engineer, my gut tells me it hasn't got a prayer. However, the X-Prize is a -challenge-, not a NASA Phase A study contract. Why not allow BRNA to attempt to rise to it? The X-Prize is all about inspiration for future generations of people to open an industry that we are on the edge of right now. Why stifle the creativity? If the BRNA project is really being run as a Minority-led operation, this could have been a perfect opportunity to promote the aerospace industry to the minorities of the world.

I know it isn't X-Prize's job, or place, to engage in political wrangling. But I maintain that it IS their place to inspire as many people as possible to pursue education and careers that may further our goals for exploration.

I can give an example of a challenge -correctly- run recently in the Nevada desert. DARPA was authorized to fund a $1M winner-take-all competition to navigate a vehicle completely autonomously within some insanely short time-period from Barstow CA to Primm NV. For those of you who aren't aware, this is a VERY hard task -- comparable in scope to the X-Prize, but with a MUCH larger potential market.

Several of the teams were able to marshall over $10M to build their challenge vehicles. Others were not. The team I focus on is one composed of nearly entirely High-School students, with a faculty technical advisor. In all honesty, I can't imagine that anyone thought they could win (they didn't; their vehicle bumped the starting gate, disqualifying them). However, there was no assumption of incompetence by DARPA. No attempt to marginalize their participation. They were considered a full team, credible to the very end (credible even now, in my mind).

DARPA had, like any beaurocratic government agency, a series of milestones to be passed by EVERY team, before allowing them to compete on race day: Careful review of project documentation early in the project; Later review of detailed design documents, and; "Test day" at a motor raceway where each team had to complete a basic obstacle course. There were, I think, teams disqualified at each step, and it was for the simple reason that they did not meet stated expectations.

I don't know that the X-Prize has the resources required to truly and fairly evaluate the teams. Just like the teams, X-Prize has had to scrounge for money. They may lack required expertise to adequately evaluate designs, and as far as I'm aware, there hasn't been any series of milestones designed to eliminate stragglers ( I may be wrong in that; I don't keep up with the administrative aspects of our project (no time!) ). In addition, X-Prize is a global competition; much harder to administer than a US local one.

If X-Prize had a credible series of milestones to judge and weed, there would be no basis for complaint when being eliminated from competition. And more importantly, there would be no embarassment involved when a team with no chance squeaks through the hoops.

The attitude of some of the people here is pretty poor. English language proficiency should obviously not be a consideration for a global competition.

Appearance of a mock-up should only partly influence your opinions of the team. Several of my team's mock-ups articles, and even a couple flight articles contain wood (only small amounts, I promise). Wood is easy to work, and doesn't have to dry/cure/harden/cost$.

Obviously BRNA's claims of trips to Pluto etc. are way off base unless they've discovered some novel form of propulsion. Unlikely to the extreme... but let them try to prove it! How a team with a far-out idea can hurt the competition is beyond me... look at that William Hung guy if you need a pop-culture analogy.

As a 24 year old, it frightens me that some of the older scientists and engineers out there are so quick to dismiss 'hair-brained' ideas. It SICKENS me that some of the YOUNGER scientists and engineers also dismiss 'hair-brained' ideas. By all means, -challenge- them... question them... disect them... vivisect them... prove them wrong. But don't dismiss. X-Prize ought to let them run out the competition as best they can. It's only 7 months or so (likely less, if we can get it together .